Positive thinking

Sarah Steele, University of Cambridge   It was revealed recently that members of the Windrush generation of migrants to the UK and their children were having difficulty getting care on the National Health Service because of confusion over their healthcare entitlement. The fiasco highlighted critical issues with the newly expanded charging regime. Under this, those who can’t prove they are entitled to free care have to pay upfront for a range of treatments. These include many hospital treatments and outpatient services, but also some mental health services and community care. When instituting and expanding charging, the UK government guaranteed it would be fair and the vulnerable would be protected – and that immediately necessary and urgent care would never be withheld. However, cases of patients denied cancer treatment unless they can pay significant sums in advance, as well as reports from Doctors of the World of patients scared they might receive large bills i...

Erica Consterdine, University of Sussex Immigration policy under Theresa May’s tenure might be the most draconian in Britain’s history. Never has an administration focused so much time and effort on an anti-migration policy – and one that is failing by all counts at that. Countless restrictive measures have been placed on almost every migration stream since 2010, when the coalition government set itself a flawed net migration target. This was driven by a Conservative manifesto pledge to reduce annual immigration from hundreds of thousands of people to tens of thousands. Behind the changes to the immigration rules has been an overarching policy to create a “hostile environment”. The public is now seeing the harsh and inhumane implications of this policy, with the Windrush generation , who helped to rebuild post-war Britain, being denied their rights. But what is this hostile environment and where did this policy come from? The story starts back in 2004, when the Labour...

   Nando Sigona, University of Birmingham Theresa May , the UK prime minister, and Amber Rudd , home secretary, have both apologised for the distress caused by the treatment of the so-called “Windrush generation”, in the face of mounting pressure from MPs and the wider public. Having been accused by the Home Office of residing in the UK without authorisation, these Commonwealth-born, long-term British residents have been denied access to services and threatened with deportation. Now, the unfolding scandal is stoking concerns among EU nationals in the UK, who also exercised freedom of movement to come to the UK, and are being asked to produce retroactive proof of their right to remain in the emerging post-Brexit scenario. The Windrush generation arrived in the UK, not as migrants, but as British subjects exercising a form of “freedom of movement” within the borders of the British territories. The British Nationality Act 1948 imparted the status of citizensh...